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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26390530">psych!</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratbandaid/pseuds/ratbandaid'>ratbandaid</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>sylvix week 2020!! [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Falling In Love Speedrun, Humor, M/M, Mutual Pining, Nonbinary My Unit | Byleth, One Shot, Psychology, fast burn, yes felix is korean yes i am projecting onto him no i will not shut up</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:46:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,383</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26390530</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratbandaid/pseuds/ratbandaid</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Pairs of names line the projector screen in columns, a bold caption simply claiming, ‘GROUPS’ at the top. Felix scans the page for his name. He finds his name at the bottom of the second column. And if his eyes move just a touch to the right to see his partner’s name…</p><p>Oh. Oh no. </p><p>There’s no way.</p><p>The redheaded idiot to his right turns to face him with a foxlike grin and a mischievous glint to his eyes. “Oh, hey! Looks like we’re partners for the project, huh, Felix?”</p><p>-----<br/>Sylvix Week Day 2: Pining/Longing | <b>PDA</b> | <b>College AU</b></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>sylvix week 2020!! [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1932814</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>80</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Sylvix Week 2020 Fic Collection</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>psych!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is my Sylvix Week Day 2 entry! Inspired by a combination of two prompts: two characters do a school project on attraction together and two characters meet at a coffee shop and realize they're skipping the same class! :D My knowledge on psychology is very shaky since I haven't taken a solid psychology class in roughly two years, but hopefully it holds up alright.</p><p>The title is kind of misleading. No one pulls a PSYCH GOTCHA BITCH moment, but I just like this title,, psych,,, yanno,,, like psychology,,, i fink it's cute bruv,,,</p><p> <s>also this may or may not be korean felix propaganda</s></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Felix isn’t the type to half-ass anything.</p><p>This includes his entire academic history, a record of all straight A’s and perfect attendance even when he was on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion and stress and literal fevers; and this includes his hobbies and extracurriculars, like when he took Taekwondo from elementary school up into high school, and even when his father forced him to take that stupid Korean abacus class until it shut down from lack of business when he was younger.</p><p>Side note: why did he need to learn how to use an abacus? Modern calculators already were in frequent use by then and were perfect in their calculations. Using an abacus just made him feel old, and the math wasn’t always guaranteed to be right. It was probably a matter of trying to get Felix more connected with his heritage, but it felt more like a waste of money and time for everyone involved.</p><p>He will admit that the clicking and clacking of the little plastic pieces as he worked were pleasing though.</p><p>The point is that Felix will devote himself to perfecting his craft and getting the best results.</p><p>He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to do that for this psychology class.</p><p>No, maybe that’s an over-exaggeration. Psychology 3120 isn’t hard at all. Sure, he took it for the social science credit, and he isn’t a psychology major like just about everyone else in the class, but he’s doing fine, he thinks. The tests are relatively easy, written almost verbatim from passages in the textbook and the lectures which are honestly just points from the textbook generalized. You could literally skip reading the textbook with the near 100% guarantee that Professor Eisner is going to cover it in class.</p><p>Felix is just stressing over this final project. The syllabus was vague, simply stating, ‘More details to come,’ and Professor Eisner hasn’t hinted at it once throughout the semester.</p><p>It’s not surprising that given Felix’s personality type, he’d want strict, clear rules on what to do. And it’s not surprising that given Professor Eiser’s laidback personality and general fuck-it attitude, they wouldn’t mention it until the last possible second.</p><p>Felix lets out a huff of frustration as he plops his bag on the ground and takes his usual seat in the lecture hall, right in the middle so he can see the projector and the professor clearly. As always, he’s one of the first people in the class. He didn’t manage to beat the ginger girl to his left, Annette, who is looking over notes from the last lecture and bobbing her head a little along to the beat of the pop tracks blasting in her earbuds to his left, and he didn’t manage to beat Dimitri or Dedue, who are sitting right in the front and chatting with the professor.</p><p>As he takes out his beat-up, three-ring binder—<em>just type out your notes,</em> Annette had told him with an exaggerated roll of her eyes,<em> Professor Eisner doesn’t care and it’s faster!</em>—he happens to overhear bits and pieces of Dimitri’s conversation with the professor. They seem to be talking about the project.</p><p>“Group project,” Felix overhears Professor Eisner say, and Felix feels a thousand years’ worth of exasperation settle in his bones. Group projects suck so fucking much. They’re so anxiety-inducing and needlessly stressful.</p><p>Well, there isn’t much he can do about something that the professor already decided.</p><p>As long it allows at <em>least</em> three people, he’s got his group figured out—Annette, Mercedes, and himself. He’s only met them this semester, but they seem reliable and hard-working—and, most importantly Felix actually kind of sort of knows them and can tolerate them. If it’s more, Felix can just complain to them while they work with him. If it’s only two people, then Annette is probably going to ditch him with a pitiful frown—<em>sorry, I’ve known Mercie since, like, forever! I have to partner with her!</em></p><p>So Felix is just hoping for that lucky number three. Ideally, he would have done this project himself, but he can’t always have his way unfortunately.</p><p>Group project. It can’t get much worse than that.</p><p>Only it can. And it does.</p><p>It gets worse.</p><p>“Groups of two,” they say.</p><p>And worse.</p><p>“I’ll be picking the groups.”</p><p>And worse.</p><p>“And the topics you’ll do your project on will be randomly drawn from a hat and presented to the class.”</p><p>Felix just about snaps the pencil he’s holding in two. This is the worst. This is one of the worst case scenarios that could happen. This stupid project alone is worth about twenty percent of his entire grade, and Professor Eisner is just throwing that twenty percent up in the air. It depends entirely on his partner and the topic they get.</p><p>He forces himself to let out a breath and calm down, ignoring the pointed, raised-eyebrow look that Annette is giving him.</p><p>No, it’ll be fine. If he gets a deadbeat partner, he’ll just suck it up, do all the work himself, and give his partner a terrible evaluation. Well, assuming the professor has group evaluations available. If not, well… He needs a good grade anyway so might as well put in the work for it.</p><p>Felix pushes the project out of his mind—at least until class starts and Professor Eisner reintroduces this stressor back to him again—and flips through his notes for a light review of what they’d last learned about.</p><p>Quietly, students file in and take the seats they always do, or the seats closest to where they usually sit. The quiet murmur of chatter in the lecture hall steadily increases as friends sit by each other—when Mercedes comes in, she offers him a baked treat as she always does, but when he inevitably declines, she and Annette get to talking as usual, as if they haven’t seen each other every other day of the week already. No, from what Annette tells him, they literally live together, so they’d be seeing each other literally every day. He doesn’t see why they’re always talking like so, but he supposes that he would to that too if he had friends were in this class.</p><p>Just as the clock strikes 11:00 and Professor Eisner stands up in front of the class, the lecture hall doors swing open, a chorus of cooing and laughter falling in through the doors as a redhead with girls clinging to him steps in. He pries himself away from the girls with ease, promising to meet after class or something.</p><p>“Hey, Professor!” Sylvain greets as if greeting an old friend, and Professor Eisner gives him a small nod of acknowledgement.</p><p>“Take a seat, Sylvain,” they say evenly, as they do every lecture.</p><p>Felix’s eyes flit around the lecture hall. Just like every other time, there isn’t a seat for Sylvain. Except for right next to him. Felix heaves out a small sigh as Sylvain grins at him and takes the empty seat beside him.</p><p>“Hello, Felix,” he greets. Felix rolls his eyes.</p><p>Felix can’t stand this guy. Sylvain’s kind of like a class clown. He asks questions to make the class laugh. Even if they’re genuine questions, he phrases them in a way that <em>someone</em> is bound to snicker at it. It even amuses Professor Eisner, who shakes their head with the smallest smile on their face.</p><p>But that’s not what bothers Felix.</p><p>He’s got such a laidback and lazy attitude, to the point where sometimes, he doesn’t seem to be paying attention while Professor Eisner is lecturing, instead going on his phone—or talking around him to talk to Annette and Mercedes, or, in the worst case scenario, trying to start up a conversation with Felix. And in the cases where he does try to take notes, he won’t take out anything but a scrap sheet of notebook paper and a single, stubby wooden pencil with the eraser so worn down that there’s nothing but the metal. And he always asks to borrow Felix’s eraser.</p><p>He seems to see that Felix isn’t the type of person who enjoys his playful mannerisms, but instead of being put off from Felix snapping at him, he seems to find it interesting. Amusing, even. He’ll pass Felix notes, sometimes crudely drawn pictures of things. He’ll whisper to him jokes or comments or full out anecdotes while Felix is trying to pay attention to the lecture. He’ll even say things that are meant to get under his skin.</p><p>“You know,” Felix remembers Sylvain saying once, his chin resting in his palm as he watched Felix take notes, “you’re kind of pretty.” Sylvain had waited a beat before adding a rushed, “I mean, for a dude, of course.”</p><p>Felix isn’t proud to admit that he got a little red in the face about that. He tried to maintain his poker face, but it’s kind of hard when the person telling him that he’s pretty is <em>an unfairly hot bastard.</em></p><p>Sylvain laughed at that.</p><p>“I’m kidding,” he said, “but do you like being told you’re pretty?” Felix fumed a little and threw his eraser at him, sticking him right in the forehead and bouncing uselessly to the ground. “Ow! Felix! Come on! It’s just a joke!” Sylvain huffed, picking up the eraser and handing it back to Felix.</p><p>Felix didn’t take it seriously. Sylvain flirts with anything that moves. He didn’t mean it. Felix <em>knows</em> Sylvain didn’t mean it and would never mean it. He was just put off that Sylvain looked at him so genuinely, his eyes half-lidded and that playful grin absent from his face when he said that. It was just a stupid and weird joke.</p><p>Yeah. That’s why he remembers that.</p><p>But even that isn’t what bothers Felix.</p><p>The thing is, even though he hardly takes notes and he’s always being insufferable to everyone sitting around him, his grades are better than Felix’s. And <em>that’s </em>what bothers him the most about Sylvain.</p><p>After their first test, Sylvain had hidden his grade and acted weird when people asked him what he got so Felix assumed he hadn’t scored well.</p><p><em>That’s what you get for not paying attention in class,</em> Felix thought smugly. But then, as Sylvain was tucking the test in his backpack—which was practically empty, save for a large economics textbook and a laptop—the sheet flipped up for a second, and Felix caught a fleeting glimpse of the grade written in a bright pink, circled with a smiley face next to it.</p><p>A perfect score. The only perfect score in the class, which Professor Eisner had off-handedly mentioned as they handed back exams. A full eight points higher than Felix.</p><p>That gap between their scores got a lot smaller as Felix adjusted to Professor Eisner’s class, but it still pissed him off.</p><p>How can someone so careless and flippant about his classes get such a good grade? There’s a chance that Sylvain could study like hell after class, but given Sylvain’s tendency not to take notes, Felix doubts it. Professor Eisner doesn’t upload the lectures, and Felix is pretty sure that Sylvain didn’t buy the ridiculously priced textbook either.</p><p>Well, Felix didn’t either. He pirated it. There was no way he was dropping a full $120 on a textbook. That’s like two whole Switch games.</p><p>Plus, Professor Eisner not-so-subtly dropped the hint that there are better ways to access the textbook than buying from the university.</p><p>Felix’s point is that he has no clue what Sylvain is studying or if he even is. He seems to spend more time sleeping around and partying than he does studying. Sylvain’s always got a bunch of girls fawning over him, even when he stumbles into class with a vicious hangover and the smell of beer practically radiating off him. It drives Felix insane that someone so—so <em>irresponsible </em>and <em>lax</em> and <em>insufferable</em> can do better than him.</p><p><em>Why the hell am I killing myself over getting good grades when you barely try and get the same—no, even </em>better<em>—grades as me?</em> he thinks bitterly.</p><p>“Did I miss anything?” Sylvain asks him, leaning over to see Felix’s notes. If there’s something that this semester’s taught him, it’s that blocking Sylvain from seeing his notes causes more problems. He’ll just kick up his annoying act and whine at Felix like a child just to get on Felix’s nerves. And it’ll work.</p><p>“No,” Felix tells him anyway.</p><p>Sylvain hums. “Just in time then.” He lets out a small sigh and sits back in his chair. “The line at the dining halls was so long today. Apparently they were making meatloaf, and it’s really popular.”</p><p>Felix wrinkles his nose. “Meatloaf? For lunch?" He’s never really had meatloaf, but the name has never been appealing to him. Plus, in all the shows he’s seen as a kid, they make it look and sound so unappetizing, accompanying the visual of a sickening color of a block of meat with uncomfortable squelching noises.</p><p>What are they talking about? Oh yeah. Sylvain’s telling him why he’s late.</p><p>“Brunch,” Sylvain corrects unhelpfully. He folds his arms behind his head and lets out a content sigh. “It was worth the wait. Thought I was going to be late though.”</p><p><em>You weren’t going to be late,</em> Felix thinks bitterly. <em>You’ve never been late. I have. Multiple times. But you always manage to come in right at 11, and not a minute after.</em></p><p>“Sylvain, keep your meatloaf stories until after class,” Professor Eisner calls from the front, drawing a few giggles from the students around them.</p><p>“Sorry, Professor,” Sylvain calls back. “You should definitely try the school meatloaf if you haven’t, though. I think you’d like it.”</p><p>Professor Eisner waits a beat, as if genuinely considering his words, but shakes their head and pulls up the lecture on the overhead projector. The class’s chatter dies down as the professor takes their spot up at the front of the class.</p><p>“Today, before class starts, I’m going to be talking a little about the project.” They press on the clicker, and the lecture pans to the next slide, where the syllabus is brought up.</p><p>Felix zones out a little as the professor talks about the grade distribution. He doesn’t need to pay attention to this. He is <em>very</em> aware of the grade distribution. He has that page of the syllabus as the very first page in his binder.</p><p>The professor then transitions to a slide with information on the project.</p><p>Topics will be randomly assigned to groups. Presentations are expected to be at least ten minutes long and in front of the class. Students will have a chance to pick a day on a shared document online. Creativity on the project can and will be awarded up to ten whole extra credit points.</p><p>It’s vague. Felix grimaces. It’s <em>too</em> vague. Probably to let the creative students in the class have a chance to be artsy and cool.</p><p>Unfortunately, Felix doesn’t have that kind of creativity. He’s already planning to make a very bare bones powerpoint presentation with one of those basic, preset themes that comes with the program slapped on to make it somewhat visually appealing. If he’s feeling really fancy, maybe he’ll find stock images or short video clips too.</p><p>Then, Professor Eisner flips to the next slides and talks about partners. Felix sits up in his chair to looks to the projectors. This is what really matters.</p><p>Pairs of names line the projector screen in columns, a bold caption simply claiming, ‘GROUPS’ at the top. Felix scans the page for his name. He finds his name at the bottom of the second column. And if his eyes move just a touch to the right to see his partner’s name…</p><p>Oh. Oh no.</p><p>There’s no way.</p><p>The redheaded idiot to his right turns to face him with a foxlike grin and a mischievous glint to his eyes. “Oh, hey! Looks like we’re partners for the project, huh, Felix?”</p><p>There’s got to be a mistake. Felix looks up at the projector screen again and tries to be more thorough. Maybe there’s another Felix in this class. It is a pretty common name, and this class is kind of big. Felix finds his name at the same place as before, at the bottom of the second column, and paired with it, is the same name as before. Sylvain.</p><p>“Please find your partner and sit by them now. I’ll give you time at the end of class to work with them so go ahead and get acquainted now. And no, I will <em>not</em> be changing partners so if you didn’t get your buddy, don’t expect me to switch your partner,” Professor Eisner announces from the front of the class, as if they could read Felix’s mind. “Make it work. If you have a genuine, honest-to-God reason why you can’t work with someone, you will need to see me after this class, and we’ll discuss it.”</p><p>The class shuffles around, and chatter starts to slowly increase as people call names and get introduced.</p><p>“Hi, partner.” Sylvain smirks. “Looks like we don’t have to move.”</p><p>Felix lets out a huff through his nostrils. Maybe he should consider telling Professor Eisner what a bad decision pairing them is. No, he doesn’t have an ‘honest-to-God reason' explaining why he can’t work with Sylvain so there’s nothing Professor Eisner will do.</p><p>OK, Felix is probably overreacting. Sylvain’s not a complete idiot, despite how he acts. He scores well on exams. He’s just going to make it hard to get the project done. He’ll be chatty as hell and annoying, but if Felix convinces him that this is important to his grade, maybe Sylvain will understand.</p><p>Felix gives Sylvain a cursory glance. Sylvain grins at him again.</p><p>TAs step around with clear ziplock bags, letting one student from each group pick their topics.</p><p>“What topic do you think we’ll get?” Sylvain muses, bouncing one of his legs. He looks antsy. Excited. Kind of like a dog. “I want something fun. Y’know, not anything from the first few units where it was just like research methods or statistics.”</p><p>“I don’t care.”</p><p>“Aw, don’t be like that. Projects can be fun.” Sylvain hums. “Just depends on what it is, I guess. And how you do it.” He points his thumb at himself. “Trust me. With me as your partner, it won’t be boring.” He winks.</p><p>Felix rolls his eyes.</p><p>When the TA eventually comes by, she holds out the ziplock bag at them. Sylvain looks over at Felix, who shakes his head. Sylvain reaches his hand in and takes out a folded strip, which he unfolds to read. Sylvain’s reaction alone—a wide grin and that same, mischievous glint to his eyes—is enough to make Felix uneasy.</p><p>“What is it?” Felix deadpans. He doesn’t give Sylvain a chance to answer, snatching the paper from his hands. The slip simply reads as follows.</p><p>
  <em>Topic: Attraction </em>
</p><p>
  <em>What affects attraction between people? Be sure to provide real-life examples when possible.</em>
</p><p>Felix stares at it. He turns the paper over. There’s nothing else written on it. He frowns and looks up to find the TA. Maybe he can bribe her into taking the sheet back and let Felix draw this time, but she’d already scurried away to the next group.</p><p>Felix sighs and puts the slip of paper on the desk.</p><p>Well, at least he can use Sylvain and his never-ending supply of girlfriends as an example of what affects attraction. With the sheer amount that that guy sleeps around, Sylvain’s bound to be one hell of a case study. Maybe that alone will convince Professor Byleth to give them a good grade.</p><p>-</p><p>At the end of the class period, as promised, Professor Eisner allots some time for groups to start planning their projects and ask them any questions that arise.</p><p>Felix sighs. “So, when are you free?” Felix takes out a sheet of paper.</p><p>“Oh?” Sylvain’s lips quirk up into a grin. “You’re taking our topic kind of literally, don’t you think?”</p><p>“I’m trying to find a time that’s good for us to work on the project, dumbass,” Felix huffs, his cheeks involuntarily heating up a little, and Sylvain just laughs.</p><p>“Sure, sure.” He hums. “I don’t think I’d mind all that much if you want to do some kind of attraction experiment though. That sounds fun.”</p><p>“I don’t. Just shut up and tell me when you’re free already.”</p><p>Sylvain fishes his phone out of his pocket. “Hm. Weekends are off the table,” he muses, looking at a screenshot of his schedule. Felix has his printed.</p><p>“Can’t you go to your stupid weekend parties <em>after</em> the project? Weekends are some of my only free days.”</p><p>Sylvain shrugs. “Well, it’s not just the parties. I have a job.”</p><p>Felix sighs. “OK. Fine.”</p><p>“I guess I’m free on Tuesdays and Thursdays after three.”</p><p>Felix looks at his schedule, but he has it memorized already. He knows that doesn’t work for him. “I’m not free on Tuesdays and Thursdays until after nine.”</p><p>Sylvain stares. “In the evening?”</p><p>Felix nods.</p><p>Sylvain whistles and shakes his head. “No wonder you’re always so grumpy,” he jokes. He leans forward and looks at Felix’s schedule. “Geez, dude. You’re so busy. How many credits is this?”</p><p>“Seventeen.” Felix feels his soul wither as he says that. It’s the maximum amount of credit hours the university would let him take—but it’s necessary. God, he’s so exhausted.</p><p>Sylvain grimaces. “Ouch. I feel that. I’m kind of busy too.” He shows Felix his schedule. “I have seventeen credit hours, just like you.”</p><p>Felix sighs. “Then maybe we can work on it early in the morning. Before any of our classes.” He pauses. “No. That doesn’t work. I have an eight am.”</p><p>“Same.”</p><p>A silence settles between them. Anxiety rages on in Felix’s chest. How are they going to finish a project if they can’t even decide on a day to work on it?</p><p>“OK, well, how about we decide what we want to do first?” Sylvain suggests. “Then we can split the work on it, and we don’t have to worry about meeting all the time.”</p><p>“Fine.”</p><p>“I’m thinking we can do something fun.” Sylvain snaps his fingers and beams. “Like a skit! I took a scriptwriting class last semester—”</p><p>“I’m not acting. I suck at acting.” Felix crosses his arms. “And I’d be caught dead before I get caught on camera.”</p><p>Sylvain blinks, a little shocked, but he laughs. “OK, OK. I get that. You don’t have to be in it. Maybe you can be the cameraman. I can find a friend who likes to act.”</p><p>“Just don’t have a skit, period. That’s too complicated.”</p><p>Sylvain raises an eyebrow. “You don’t want creativity points?”</p><p>“I don’t care about them. I know we’ll do fine without them.” Felix impatiently bounces his leg. “Let’s just make a powerpoint. It’ll be easier on both of us since our schedules don’t line up anyway.”</p><p>Sylvain sighs. “That’s so boring! And such a waste!”</p><p>“A waste?” Felix furrows his brows.</p><p>“I mean, what are the chances you’ll ever get to make a project on attraction? With so much freedom? I think we should make something that blows Professor Eisner away.”</p><p>Felix gives Sylvain a flat look.</p><p>“Don’t be such a hard-ass, Felix. This can be fun if you just let it!”</p><p>Felix notices people starting to stand and file out of the lecture hall. He looks down and finds that it’s already the end of class. He needs to get going soon. His next class is on the other side of campus, and he hardly ever makes it on time using the campus buses.</p><p>Felix starts to pack his bag. “We’ll discuss this later,” he says. “But we are <em>not</em> doing a skit.”</p><p>Sylvain shrugs. “Whatever.”</p><p>“Wait, before I go, give me your number.”</p><p>Sylvain grins.</p><p>“Don’t even think about saying it. I’m not fucking hitting on you.” Felix holds his phone out for Sylvain. “I need to be able to contact you for the project.”</p><p>Sylvain’s smirk doesn’t leave his face as he puts in his number and hands Felix’s phone back to him. “Well, if that’s what helps you sleep at night.”</p><p>Felix sends Sylvain a quick text—<em>This is Felix, PSYCH3120.</em>—and once Sylvain’s phone lights up with the message, Felix practically bolts out of the lecture hall. He can’t get out of there fast enough.</p><p>Felix takes back any positive feelings he’s had about this project. This stupid project is going to be one hell of a disaster.</p><p>-</p><p>As Felix predicted, the project is getting nowhere fast.</p><p>Their conversations over text aren’t very productive.</p><p>Any time that Felix texts Sylvain about the project, Sylvain always manages to derail their conversations, and it’s always so smooth that Felix fails to notice for a while. Felix would really sit there and read Sylvain’s messages about a good movie he saw or a local and underrated cafe—<em>we can go together if you want ;)</em>—or a class he’s taking, and he won’t notice that they haven’t gotten a single thing on the project yet until Sylvain hits him with the <em>gtg</em>, <em>sorry.</em></p><p>To make matters worse, they still haven’t decided on a day to meet up, and they still don’t know what to do for the project. Sylvain is still a staunch believer that their project on attraction should be fun and creative, not a boring powerpoint. Felix refuses to do anything that will take up too much time or make himself look like a fool.</p><p>“How about having a survey? Campus-wide?” Sylvain had suggested once, much to Felix’s vexation.</p><p>“Like anyone would take that seriously. Have you been paying to class? A survey’s weaknesses lie in the fact that it relies on the respondents to be honest.”</p><p>“Then an experiment?”</p><p>“On what?” When Sylvain failed to produce an idea, Felix clicked his tongue. “Too much work, too little time and results.”</p><p>Sylvain looked like he was getting fed up too. “Well, how about you come up with something?”</p><p>“I did.” Felix sat back in his chair. “A powerpoint.” He sighs. “Listen, I don’t have time to waste here arguing with you over what to do. You make things too complicated. I’ll just make the fucking powerpoint, and you can slap your name on it on the end, I guess. You don’t have to do shit. I’ll do it. All you have to do is sit there, shut up, and look pretty when we present it. You can do that at the very least, can’t you? Isn’t that what you’re known for? Being a handsome, useless dumbass?”</p><p>There was a pause. Then, Sylvain gave a small chuckle. “Felix, you think I’m handsome? You should have just said so. You didn’t have to say all that just to get your feelings across!”</p><p>“Ugh, fuck off.”</p><p>Felix hadn’t noticed then, but when he thought back to it, Sylvain had been making an odd face, something much different from the laidback and lazy, flirty grin he usually wears. It looked like genuine concern. No, that’s not it.</p><p>He didn’t look concerned. He looked kind of upset. Hurt, maybe.</p><p>His eyebrows were furrowed, and there was a stormy look to his eyes.</p><p>Felix felt kind of bad about that. Kind of really bad, actually. Felix is mean, but he doesn’t think he’s ever really been that level of mean to anyone other than his dad, and even then, he’s only done that in those moments soon after Glenn had died.</p><p>Felix gave Sylvain a pretty stilted apology the next time they met up by handing him a caramel macchiato from that local café Sylvain had mentioned and trying to express that he didn’t really mean what he said. Sylvain seemed to accept the apology and seemed pretty delighted to get that drink he liked—<em>aww, you </em>do <em>pay attention to what I say! thanks, Felix!</em>—but it still felt kind of awkward between them.</p><p>And at some point, their every conversation is so stilted and focused on the project that Felix can’t bear to look at Sylvain. Can’t stand to even text him. Maybe he’s being dramatic, but he feels like just looking at Sylvain is just a reminder that his grade is about to plummet twenty points down. That’s two whole letter grades.</p><p>His anxiety is shooting through the roof, and he’s really running on fumes even though he’s still got a month before the project is due. He even started making the powerpoint, but it feels terrible knowing he has all this work on his shoulders just because he and Sylvain can’t agree on what to do.</p><p>So Felix starts to skip his psychology lectures.</p><p>Ordinarily, not being in class would drive him insane. He’s missing vital information and the lectures aren’t posted anywhere—but avoiding class really blesses his mind with a fresh wave of relief since he doesn’t have to look at Sylvain or sit in class with the knowledge that he’s going to have to present his project eventually.</p><p>Plus, Annette doesn’t seem to mind sending him the notes. She seems to pity him. She should. Her luck was absolutely impeccable, and she got partnered with Mercedes. They’re already a good chunk through their project, having fun and laughing as they make a little parody of a pop song for their project on different neurotransmitters.</p><p>Felix doesn’t get to have fun with his partner. They just argue, and he just suffers, now having to do the work by himself.</p><p>One morning, while he’s skipping class, he’s hit with a craving for coffee. He decides to drop by that small café where he had picked up a drink for Sylvain. It had a cozy vibe, even if it was kind of located in a sketchy place, and it smelled nice in there, so why not, right?</p><p>So Felix heads to the café, a little place wedged between two massive chain restaurants. There are stairs leading down into it, which <em>definitely </em>makes it look shady, kind of like one of those underground casinos from movies. But the people who made it must have realized how intimidating it looked because the walls are decorated with colorful posters and drawings, and the door to the café is always propped open, the delicious smell of coffee drifting out into the streets.</p><p>Felix stands in line and checks his phone. His friend, Ingrid, is currently texting him in the middle of her political science course about a good restaurant she found out about and is trying to bug Felix into making time in his busy schedule to hang out there.</p><p>“I can help the next person!” the cashier calls, and Felix looks up, checking his place in line. He’s next. He starts to move towards the cashier, but he stops dead in his tracks.</p><p>That’s when he sees a familiar figure stepping away from the register, a flash of red hair and a relaxed grin. Felix stares and squints. Maybe his vision is getting worse from all those hours he spends studying in low lights or staring too long at a screen, like how his father always told him as a kid. Or maybe his contacts are fucked up somehow.</p><p>No. That’s definitely Sylvain. Felix is sure of it. Felix recognizes him—the way he does his bright red hair, that very outfit of the faded gray hoodie with the university logo printed across the middle and a denim jacket pulled on over it, the thin black backpack hanging loosely from one of his shoulders. Felix has no doubt about it. That’s definitely Sylvain.</p><p>But what’s he doing here?</p><p>He quickly looks down at his phone. It’s roughly 11:15. Thoughts are starting to fly in Felix’s head. <em>Psych started fifteen minutes ago. That’s Sylvain. Sylvain’s in my class. He’s skipping class. We’re both skipping class. </em></p><p>Felix steps out of line, the cashier giving him a weird look, and he makes a beeline towards Sylvain, anger rising up in him. <em>He’s skipping class, and he hasn’t said a word to me about that fucking project.</em></p><p>He taps Sylvain on the shoulder—well, with the force he’s doing it at, it’s more like he’s jabbing him. Sylvain turns. His eyes widen.</p><p>“Felix?” Sylvain reaches up and pulls an earbud—one of those wireless ones, because of <em>course</em> Sylvain has those—and stares at Felix. “Why are you here? Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”</p><p>“Aren’t <em>you</em>? We’re in the same class, asshole.” Felix fumes. “If you have time to skip class and grab a latte, why don’t you try to work with me on the fucking project?” he snarls. It comes out a little more passive-aggressively than he’d like. He wanted to sound angrier, but he doesn’t think he really can when he’s doing the exact same thing as Sylvain—avoiding class, avoiding his project, avoiding the other.</p><p>Sylvain blinks. Unperturbed, he just chuckles lightly. “Well, we’re both here now, aren’t we? Let’s just get it out of the way then. I’ll get a seat, if you want to go get a drink or something first.”</p><p>-</p><p>They’re still at a stalemate. Felix is unmoving on his refusal to do anything too out there. Sylvain is unmoving on his stance that this project can be fun. After some point, they fall into another one of their silences, kind of trying to avoid looking at one another as they try to find a compromise.</p><p>“Hey,” Sylvain says, breaking the silence after a sip of his drink. “You know, this whole time, I’ve kind of been telling you things about me.”</p><p>Felix stares. “What?”</p><p>“You know. Over text. You don’t really talk about yourself much.”</p><p>Felix huffs. Is this Sylvain trying to change the topic again? “Sylvain, the project—”</p><p>“I know, I know. I just think that maybe you’d be more comfortable with our project if we were less like strangers or classmates and more like friends.” Sylvain smiles at him. “So let's just talk. You already know some stuff about me.”</p><p><em>It’s hard not to know anything about you,</em> Felix thinks, raising an eyebrow. <em>Practically everyone in class—no, on campus too, probably—knows about you. </em></p><p>Felix notices that Sylvain’s staring expectantly. He squirms a little under Sylvain’s gaze. “There’s not much to say about me. I’m a bio major. Second year.”</p><p>“Well, you’ve told me your major and year in class before. So how about hobbies?”</p><p>Felix quirks his lips into a frown. When was the last time he genuinely paid attention to his hobbies? “Video games,” he says plainly, hoping that it’ll be enough of a deterrent so that Sylvain won’t press on the topic.</p><p>It isn’t. It’s the exact opposite.</p><p>“Yeah?” Sylvain’s eyes light up. “What games? FPS? RPG? Otome?”</p><p>Felix stares. Is one of the biggest fuckboys on campus—a guy who seems like he’s definitely in a frat—asking him if he likes otome games? Wait, why does Sylvain even know what they are?</p><p>Felix sighs. “Just games. Sylvain, listen—”</p><p>“Humor me.”</p><p>Felix rolls his eyes. “Sylvain.”</p><p>“Please?” Sylvain gives him a pleading look, the kind that girls would lose their minds over—<em>he’s so cute! he’s so dreamy!</em></p><p>Felix rubs his temples. From what he’s learned of Sylvain this semester, he knows that Sylvain isn’t going to let up on this topic unless he gets what he wants—or until Felix yells at him, and Felix hasn’t had his coffee long enough to feel like going off on Sylvain. Keenly aware that while they have this dumb conversation, time to complete the project is slipping away and the start of his next class is slowly inching closer and closer haunts him.</p><p>But he humors Sylvain.</p><p>After a brief pause, he mutters, “FPS.” It’s not entirely true. He plays a whole variety of games, but he holds his fondest memories in FPS games, when he and Glenn would be playing a match in Call of Duty or when Ingrid would play Valorant with him and take it <em>way </em>too seriously. “I recently got really into Overwatch again.”</p><p>Sylvain grins. “Overwatch? Hey, me too! Who’s your main?”</p><p>Felix arches an eyebrow. He doesn’t think he’s met any frat-esque boys who knew enough about shooters to ask in detail about the characters—they usually seemed more interested in the on-campus football teams.</p><p>So what kind of guy is Sylvain, really?</p><p>“Don’t have one,” he lies. He doesn’t want to discuss playing video games out in public any more than he needs to. It’s pretty embarrassing—and they still have a project to complete.</p><p>“Really? Huh. Well, you strike me as a Genji main.”</p><p>He’s right. Felix likes to go for Genji when he can. He’s a cool character—a half-robot ninja with a fucked up family life, who fights with shurikens and swords. And he can climb walls and has got pretty cool skins. Why <em>wouldn’t</em> Felix main him?</p><p>Felix frowns. “What? Why?”</p><p>“Gut feeling.” Sylvain laughs. “So, was I right? Did I guess right?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>It doesn’t matter what Felix’s answer is. Sylvain’s pretty much made up his mind that he’s right.</p><p>Which he is.</p><p>Unfortunately.</p><p>Felix lets out a sigh, the tips of his ears burning. The fact that Sylvain’s giving him this charming smile, the genuine kind that come up to your eyes and leave them in little crescents with wrinkles gently forming on the sides of them.</p><p>And against Felix’s better judgment—there’s a project! due! in! a! month!—Felix can’t help but to indulge in Sylvain’s little conversation a little more.</p><p>Not to keep that smile on his face or to keep Sylvain’s caramel-colored eyes on him or anything.</p><p>“So? Who do you play then?”</p><p>-</p><p>It turns out that he and Sylvain have more in common than Felix initially thought.</p><p>They’re both into the same kinds of games and books, music and food. They’re both from similar parts of the state. They grew up in the same city, it seems.</p><p>And their families are kind of similar too, in that they both have older brothers—or, rather, they both <em>had</em> older brothers. Sylvain wouldn’t elaborate on his older brother at all, though he did say his name once while they chatted—<em>Miklan,</em> he had said, a dark look starting to form over his expression—but Felix can respect that.</p><p>He doesn’t want to bring up Glenn to someone he barely knows either.</p><p>But by the time that Felix’s next class rolls around, he realizes that, again, they haven’t gotten anywhere with their project. But Felix supposes that Sylvain’s whole spiel that maybe Felix would want to be a little more comfortable with the project if they knew each other was right. Felix is a little more open towards Sylvain.</p><p>And besides, they still have time, right? Sylvain promised to meet back with him at the café again in two days to actually discuss the project, so that conversation wasn’t completely a waste of time.</p><p>-</p><p>This has to be a cruel joke. This has to be the worst, most ironic joke that God could ever cast on Felix. Is this payback for not believing in a god? Is this punishment for all those times when his father would take him to church and he snuck in his DS to play during service?</p><p>No, Felix is just getting carried away. He’s overthinking, as he tends to, and Ingrid’s suggestion—<em>maybe you have a crush on him—</em>really isn’t helping.</p><p>Over the past couple of weeks, he and Sylvain have been meeting up at that café to work on their project.</p><p>Twice a week, they’d head over and get some tea or coffee or sandwiches or whatever, and they’d take their usual seat in the very back of the café, seated by a nice window in a booth. They’d work a little on the powerpoint that Felix started—<em>it’s just a placeholder until we agree to make something more fun,</em> Sylvain insists, though he does put a lot of effort into his part of the slides.</p><p>But Felix has realized something terrible as he’s been coming out to see Sylvain—to work on the project. The words on his notes, his textbook, online, on the slides. They all start to haunt him.</p><p>The five factors of attraction—similarity, proximity, attractiveness, reciprocity, and self-disclosure—stick around in the back of his mind every time he talks with Sylvain. Every time he looks at him. Every time he thinks about him while he’s in his apartment or working on the project.</p><p>They’re similar. They like the same movies and shows, games and books, singers and bands, foods and drinks. They both agree on a lot of things, like which celebrities are overrated and what the future will be like and a whole bunch of other thoughts. And even when they disagree, they’re pretty understanding of the other’s thoughts.</p><p>(Felix wonders how much of that is genuinely Sylvain’s beliefs and how much of it is just Sylvain being polite and trying to get along.</p><p>He wants to know the real Sylvain.)</p><p>They’re in proximity with one another. They’re on the same campus. They come to the same café to work together. They sit next to one another in class and they have done so since the beginning of the semester.</p><p>Felix doesn’t think that he himself is attractive, but Sylvain most definitely is. It’s simply true. Girls and guys alike on campus are likely to turn their heads when they see Sylvain walking by, like he exudes some kind of warm radiance that they simply want to be a part of. But Felix doesn’t get that kind of attention.</p><p>(<em>You know, you’re kind of pretty</em>, unhelpfully echoes in his mind again and again and again.)</p><p>Felix has finally coming around to reciprocating Sylvain’s feeling of friendship. It’s been a long time coming, considering how much they interact. But he considers them friends now, especially given that Sylvain likes to call them friends too.</p><p>(But does he want something more? Something closer?)</p><p>And ever since they started meeting up more often, they’ve been opening up to each other, more and more. It started small, with meaningless little facts here and there—<em>I really like cats</em> and <em>I hate sweets—</em>but it became something more after they’d danced the line of what was too much and what wasn’t enough.</p><p>Slowly, slowly, their conversations stopped being so meaningless. They became deeper, heavier. More honest. To themselves and each other.</p><p>Sylvain told Felix about Miklan. And Felix told Sylvain about Glenn.</p><p>It only solidifies that they’re similar, only brings them closer. With tragic family lives, with older brother figures now absent from their lives.</p><p>This must be a punishment of some sort from God—to work on a project about attraction, to be attracted to one you’re working on that project with. Someone who he’d despised at the beginning of the semester is now someone he potentially holds feelings for. It’s times like this where Felix wants to meet whatever deity is messing with his life and give them a taste of their own medicine.</p><p>“Just tell him you like him,” Ingrid says, speaking around the Korean barbeque in her mouth, just hardly audible over the sound of the meat sizzling on the grill between them and the soft murmur of chatter and the clatter of chopsticks against metal plates around them.</p><p>“I don’t like him,” Felix huffs at her, reaching forward to pull some meat onto his plate.</p><p>“Sure.” Ingrid rolls her eyes. “It’s pretty obvious you do, from what you’ve told me.” She points her chopsticks at him as she speaks. “You always do this shit. You tell yourself, ‘no, I don’t, no, I don’t,’ over and over, and then you miss your chance because you’re in denial.”</p><p>Felix frowns.</p><p>Her expression softens a little. “Felix, come on. It’s college. It’s the perfect time to start getting some new experiences and having fun.”</p><p>“I need to focus on my studies.”</p><p>Ingrid gives an exasperated sigh. “No, you don’t. All you <em>ever</em> do is than focus on your studies. Listen, I agree. Studying is important, but not when you’re studying yourself into an early grave. Get out there. Date someone. Have some fun!” She smiles. “Coming from me, you should know I mean it.”</p><p>If there’s anyone whose work ethics match Felix’s, it’s Ingrid—and maybe Dimitri, but Felix refuses to acknowledge that they have anything in common. So maybe he should take her advice.</p><p>But he’s wary. He doesn’t want to do anything stupid that’ll break this brand new friendship between him and Sylvain, especially since Sylvain seems to understand him more than most people do already.</p><p>He’ll just wait. He’ll wait it out. The feelings won’t stay forever.</p><p>And Sylvain’s popular. He’ll find someone. Someone kind and soft and funny and exciting and loving. He always seems to.</p><p>Felix ignores the way that the meat he’s eaten sinks to the bottom of his stomach like a slab of stone and the way that his heart sinks too.</p><p>-</p><p>They’re presenting their project.</p><p>Well, not yet. There are a few groups before them, but Felix can hardly focus on the other groups. The song that Mercedes and Annette perform in front of the class sounds muffled and distant. The skit that Ashe and Caspar perform goes right over his head. The immaculate model of the brain that Dimitri and Dedue made just looks like a blob of color to him.</p><p>“Hey. Don’t be so nervous,” Sylvain whispers to him, nudging him with his shoulder. “It’ll be fine.”</p><p>“I’m not nervous.”</p><p>“You’re shaking your leg. It’s shaking the table.”</p><p>Felix stops moving his leg, and the little chattering sound accompanying it stops too. The pencils on the table roll to a stop; his water bottle stops teetering and tottering.</p><p>So that’s where that sound was coming from. He feels a little bad at the way that the other students around them give sighs of relief, shooting him dirty looks.</p><p>Sylvain smiles at him. “Don’t worry about the project. It’ll be fine.”</p><p>His smile is soft; his eyes are warm. He looks so unbothered, so confident. It’s impossible for Felix not to believe him.</p><p>But Felix has grown to spot little things in Sylvain’s behavior too. He’s nervous as well. He keeps tapping his fingers against the table, or he’ll fidget with a pencil, spinning it in his hands. From time to time, the pencil will drop to the ground, and Felix will catch Sylvain’s hand trembling just the tiniest bit.</p><p><em>I’m not scared of giving presentations,</em> Sylvain had told him at one point while they were working on the project. Felix looked up at him. <em>I mean, I’m pretty used to our class by now anyway. </em>He flashed Felix a toothy grin. <em>So leave it to me. If you’re starting to bomb, I’ll pick up where you left off. I promise.</em></p><p>Felix wonders if that was a lie to make Felix feel better.</p><p>“Felix? Sylvain?” Professor Eisner calls as two other students at the front of the class start to head back towards their seats. “Please present your topic to the class.”</p><p>Felix takes in a deep breath and stands up, following Sylvain down to the front. Sylvain hands the professor a flashdrive, and Felix takes a spot at the front of the class, staring up at the rest of the lecture hall.</p><p>Felix has never felt so small. Not even when standing next to Dedue or Dimitri or even Sylvain. With all these eyes on him, judging everything about him from head to toe, Felix feels like he’s only a mere few feet tall. Like a child. And the projector beaming down from above to the wall behind him, it feels like a bright spotlight—no, like a ray of light that has immobilized him in stone.</p><p>He looks over at Sylvain. He’s telling the professor something. It feels like it’s taken hours.</p><p>Professor Eisner isn’t technologically incompetent. They shouldn’t need help using a flashdrive, especially since they’ve been using them on and off throughout these presentations already.</p><p>So what’s taking so long?</p><p>Professor Eisner chuckles and pats Sylvain on the shoulder. Felix frowns.</p><p>Sylvain grins back and does a little half-jog to get to Felix’s side, giving him a little nudge and a wink. Felix presses his lips into a thin half-smile back.</p><p>The presentation goes as rehearsed. Felix covers the first half of the slides, his voice deadpan and echoing in the silent lecture hall. His voice doesn’t crack, which he’s grateful for, but it does tremble a little when he realizes how many people are watching him.</p><p>But Sylvain, as promised, always picks up where he left off. If Felix forgets a word, Sylvain will whisper it to him or simply pick up from their script, finishing the rest of that slide.</p><p>It makes Felix feel warm to think that Sylvain’s helping him out, so if Sylvain fumbles at all, Felix jumps back in to help him too, in any way that he can. If Sylvain happens to skip a bullet point, Felix will make sure to hit on it before the slide switches, and he’ll answer any of the questions Professor Eisner throws out at them.</p><p>But by the end of the slides, Felix freezes. The presentation looks different than what he last remembered.</p><p>This isn’t the citations page. No, this is <em>definitely </em>not the citations page.</p><p>It’s a light pink page with little roses lining the sides of it. With the words ‘Case Study’ written at the top. What the fuck.</p><p>Panicking, Felix looks over at Sylvain, who just smiles and steps up to the center of the class.</p><p>Was this rehearsed? Felix runs their slides back through his head. He doesn’t remember this slide at all. He specifically told Sylvain that they weren’t doing a case study on anything. He wanted no tomfoolery. He just wanted a bare bones powerpoint, and Sylvain agreed on these terms as long as he got to control the theme and visuals of the slides.</p><p>So what the hell is he doing?</p><p>The lights of the lecture hall dim a little more. Felix whips his head back to stare at the slide and then back again at Sylvain. He hears someone snickering from the back of the class—is that Annette?</p><p>“Sylvain,” he hisses. “What the fuck is this? What are you doing?”</p><p>Sylvain doesn’t acknowledge him. “Through the duration of our project, we studied the five factors that affect attraction.” He hits his clicker, and the points pop up on the slide. “And here they are, for those of us who weren’t paying attention before.”</p><p>A soft chuckle runs through the class, and a few students—including that one kid, Linhardt, who always sleeps through class in the back of the lecture hall—lift their heads groggily, sheepishly. It seems that everyone’s paying attention now.</p><p>“But the thing is, while I was working on this project, I realized something.”</p><p><em>Oh God, is he gonna preach to us about love or something</em>? Felix thinks, and he pinches the bridge of his nose, bowing his head a little. <em>That idiot—we’re going to get marked off for something that stupid!</em></p><p>“And it’s that I’ve become attracted to my partner.”</p><p><em>Yeah, yeah, you found a girlfriend or whatever. Just hurry up and get it over with. </em>Felix doesn’t lift his head.</p><p>“We’ve spent a lot of time getting to know one another. We’re similar! We see each other all the time since we’re on the same campus and class. We’re in proximity! I find him very attractive. He trusts me, and I trust him. And as for reciprocity… Well, we’ll see.”</p><p>A loud gasp and an outbreak of excited whispers all over the lecture hall draws Felix’s attention. He looks up, and he finds Sylvain walking towards him.</p><p>Felix stares at him. “What?”</p><p>Sylvain grins and cocks his head a little towards the slide behind them. “Look at the slide.”</p><p>Dread claws at his heart, which starts to desperately beat faster and faster.</p><p>Everything moves in slow motion as he turns to face the slide.</p><p>His eyes widen.</p><p>On the slide, written in big, bold letters—in comic sans, probably specifically because Felix stressed that not a single word on their slide will be written in such a cursed font—the words, ‘Felix, will you go out with me?’ A flurry of melodramatic pink and red hearts flutter along the screen.</p><p>The chatter in the class grows louder.</p><p>Felix’s face flushes as he turns to Sylvain, who’s giving him a small smile and cocking his head a little, as if to say, <em>well?</em></p><p>Sylvain’s face is tinted pink, and Felix doesn’t think it’s the pink of the slide against his skin. He’s fidgeting with his hands. And there’s a clear anxiousness to his eyes.</p><p>“Did you plan this?” Felix says slowly, but the answer is painfully clear.</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“Idiot. Really? In front of the whole class? What were you going to do if I said no?”</p><p>Sylvain blinks. His smile falters the tiniest bit, but it stays put. “Suck it up. A swing and a miss, you know?”</p><p><em>That’s not how you really feel,</em> Felix thinks. <em>You’re scared. You were scared when we were sitting up there too, weren’t you? </em></p><p>“You’re serious about this?” Felix asks, and Sylvain nods, though his smile is starting to fall away.</p><p>“I mean, I completely get if you don’t feel the same! Please don’t feel like you have to say you like me back or anything. I just thought this would be a fun thing to put at the end and…” Sylvain shrugs a little. “I know it’s kind of a dick move ‘cause you might feel pressured to like me back in front of the class, but…”</p><p>“Shut up.” Felix feels his face burning, feels his heart beating even in his hands as he reaches up to Sylvain’s face. “You always talk too much.”</p><p>He presses his lips to Sylvain’s, and he smiles a little when he feels Sylvain’s slight inhale of surprise. Sylvain doesn’t hesitate, pulling Felix in a little closer.</p><p>The class erupts into a roar of cheer and surprise. If Felix peeks an eye open at the class, he sees that Annette is standing, pressing her hands against the desk and gaping at them, that Ashe is laughing cheerfully, that Caspar is whooping—that Dimitri and Dedue are sharing shocked looks but pleasant smiles, that Mercedes is applauding a little, that even Linhardt is awake, staring in shock.</p><p>Felix closes his eyes and leans a little more into the kiss. His heart feels like it's pounding so fast and hard that it's going to explode, but it feels pleasant.  Freeing. Especially knowing that Sylvain fell for him the same way he fell for Sylvain. </p><p>Professor Eisner gives them a moment before breaking them up and shooing them back to their seats, pressing the flashdrive into their hands.</p><p>“You can come collect your rubric at the end of the class,” they say, and pause before adding, “Congratulations, I guess.” Then they turn to the rest of the class. “Okay, okay, that’s enough. Class! That’s enough!” Professor Eisner raises their voice, trying to calm the class. “Class!” They sigh, but there’s a small smile on their face. They laugh a little. "I know that it was a very fun project, but settle down! We still a few more to go for today"</p><p>Sylvain reaches for Felix’s hand, a little hesitantly, and Felix takes it, letting Sylvain lead them back to their seat.</p><p>"Do you really like me back?" Sylvain asks in a small whisper as the next group tries to work with Professor Eisner to calm the class for their presentation. "Being in front of the class might... You know..."</p><p>"Yes." Felix sighs. "I wasn't doing that for the class or for the project or whatever. I really do like you." He pauses. "I suck at acting, remember?"</p><p>Sylvain beams at him, leaning in for another kiss.</p><p>-</p><p>
  <em>Score: 100. Nicely done. But in the future, please try to avoid acts of PDA in front of the entire class. </em>
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  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This was meant to be a lot shorter, but it got really out of hand lol </p><p>I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless! :D</p></blockquote></div></div>
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